by Bruce Gagnon
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Bruce’s blog post
space4peace.blogspot.com
Jan 4, 2009
There is more debate inside Israel about their nation’s illegal and immoral attack on the defenseless people of Gaza than here in the US. In America we witness a non-stop display of Israeli government spokespersons on TV justifying their murderous assault on the Palestinian people. I’ve seen nothing on TV or in the newspaper about protests in our country.
Tonight I even heard Israeli government representatives on CNN and MSNBC denying that more than 400 Palestinian people had been killed in recent days by Israel’s incessant bombing. These bold faced liars accused the Palestinians of making up the numbers of dead in order to sway public opinion. How despicably low can Israel stoop? And how low can the American media stoop in their servitude and complicity?
It is a virtual turkey shoot, like shooting fish in a barrel, happening right now in Gaza. The corrupt American media asks few tough questions as the Israeli government keeps the world media from filming their military rampage.
I read a report tonight from a friend that Cynthia McKinney is now back in the US and that Israel today bombed and destroyed the port that Cynthia and a European medical team tried to sail into earlier this week with medical supplies. All of the fishing boats have also been blown up in the port making it virtually impossible for them to transport food into Gaza.
Still we hear nothing from Obama. We expect nothing from Bush but we must insist that Obama stand up and call for an end to this systematic slaughter of a people who have no Army, Navy, or Air Force. The excuse that Hamas is launching some ineffective rockets to justify this genocidal policy is deceptive and sickening. We Americans are allowing this madness to continue and we are paying for it with our tax dollars!
Yesterday I joined an hour long protest in Portland at noon and two TV stations came to cover the event. But they spent at least 20 minutes interviewing the one Jewish man in a suit that crashed the protest, began yelling in some of our faces, and then went over to the media who eagerly put him on camera. Our very diverse group of at least 75 people, standing in the freezing cold, was not reported on by the local newspaper.
The media are captives of this war machine that is now churning death full bore in Gaza.
God help us all and most importantly, god help the Palestinian people. Not enough of us seem to care. Our hearts have turned cold.
see
Some Would Call It Genocide by Bruce Gagnon + Cynthia McKinney SLAMS Israeli Navy
The obscenity that is the state of Israel by William Bowles
Raw Footage of Gaza Protest in Manhattan
Dandelion Salad 
I am a citizen of the UK born and bread. It’s horrific what the people of Gaza are living through on a daily basis. Yet our governments still support these terrible powers that are in force in Israel. This is not what the Torah taught, this is blatant Natzi behaviour! Please tell me what I can do here in the UK to help this situation. For the sake of my own family, I will do whatever I can I make a stand and prevent a holy war
israel is neverending nightmare for our world.GOD HELP US……
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The United States is an oligarchic tyrannical state. And so is Israel. The American terrorist empire ‘developed’ successfully at this present dimension ‘thanks’ to the systematic control of its own masses of people. One of the main goals of oligarchic regimes – is to reduce the individual to its simplest, limited material condition, by exploiting its material instincts to desire more material goods; to alter the value of individuals, which in its turn produces changes over the time at the mass people’s level. The media is the most powerful weapon and ‘agent of change’ in the government’s quest to dominate the masses of people. The tyrannical governments establish experiences by inducing conditions such as breakdown, fear in population with the goal of brainwashing masses of people. Through the use of terror, the individual can be reduced to a submissive condition, in which his/her power of reason is blurred that his/her emotional response to various situations and stimuli be predictable. In this way the individual can be easy directed and controlled toward any scope a tyrannical government wants. It is possible for tyrannical political forces to induce a similar state of anxiety in large groups of people, whose behaviour can then be controlled, manipulated by these forces. Through mass media –large numbers of people are subject to controlled messages- a key element to the creation of ‘controlled environments’ for brainwashing purposes. That the victims to not be aware of these environments —is exactly what the dictatorial regimes do not want in achieving their goal of mass brainwashing. People are induced to form their opinion by what believe others around them to believe. Appearances of reports in the media confer the aura of reality upon stories it transmits.
One of the techniques used for this control by oligarchic forces is to select a target group, and scare the masses of people in respect to the malevolent intentions of this ‘target group’ towards them. When the masses are frightened enough, or scared to death, the controllers created the ‘optimal condition’ to annihilate the target group, using all the force available to them. It is what Israelis try desperately to do with regards to the crimes they have committed in Gaza. They fight demonically to induce to the masses of people through the means of the media they control- their justification for the genocide of Palestinians: that Israel’s actions are in self-defence when committing genocide. US and Israel are ruled by war criminals.
Yes it is indeed wrong for Hamas to fire rockets at Israeli towns. But how about proportionality? Four or five Israeli citizens now dead and well over 400 Palestinians. Hamas has no Air Force, Navy, or regular Army. The US funds and equips Israel’s military – one of the best in the world. It’s not a fair fight and violates international law for collective punishment of innocent Palestinian citizens.
But we have to go back and look at the years of economic blockades of Gaza by Israel and the recent cease fire that Hamas was willing to continue with but Israel was poking and provoking them and finally Hamas responded. Read the respected Richard Falk’s article on this very question at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-falk/understanding-the-gaza-ca_b_154777.html
Also check out Professor Stephen Zunes piece at: http://www.alternet.org/audits/116855/?page=1
Thanks, Bruce for the added info and suggested links.
Bruce, what, in your opinion, would be an appropriate response by the Israeli government to the fact and threat of missiles being launched into their homes and bedrooms from 15 seconds away while their children sleep at night? What, in fact would *you* do if a terrorist organization and de facto government in the next town over were launching missiles into your family’s home? Puh-lease.
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Thanks everyone for your comments.
Epppie, thanks for linking on Buzzflash.
There is no American soul. if there were, we would hear it speaking. After Viet Nam, we closed our mouths. Nothing, even the Iraq War, has motivated the American people to speak up and say, enough! We gave away our country to rich men who took our money, our civil liberties, and our collective conscience. Really, what have we got to show for it? And what will we take with us when we die?
America doesn’t give a damn about anything but itself, staying rich and keeping the rest of the world under its hegemonic thumb. To do so certainly hasn’t required the support of the American people, most of whom don’t understand anything about the world, or Israel, or Palestine but will eagerly slop up whatever crap the news media dishes out.
As a society we are no better than Israel. We follow blindly, without thinking. We dream without looking at facts. We elected Obama because we dreamed of a savior, even though he is just as much a pro-Zionist as Bush and every other complicit government scumbag in Washington.
Our concern is ourselves. We’re afraid that this recession means we won’t get to go on vacation this year. We stupidly bought houses we couldn’t afford, and we blame it on the banks and the government. We have about $20K in credit card debt, per citizen, and we blame the credit card companies for it. We won’t take responsibility for our own actions, much less shoulder a moral responsibility for our fellow humans.
Isn’t it more systemic than lack of media coverage. Hasn’t the American soul shriveled up and died ever since Dresden, Nagasaki, Heroshima all the while hypocritically proclaims “Liberation, Freedom and Democracy (whatever the hell that means)?
Where were the outcries when rockets were being fired to Israel??????